LONDON — Britain’s Tate gallery says it will return a painting by John Constable that was stolen from its Hungarian owner by the Nazis during World War II.
The gallery said Thursday that the government’s advisory committee on contested artworks had recommended that “Beaching A Boat, Brighton 1824” be returned to claimants who wish to remain anonymous.
Tate said it accepted the ruling.
Britain’s Spoliation Advisory Panel said the oil painting had been owned by “a well-known Hungarian artist” from a Jewish background who went into hiding in 1944. It said his property was confiscated, and the painting was likely “looted by the Germans in 1944 or early 1945.”
Tate Modern, London (photo credit: Jagandrk/Wikimedia Commons/File)
The painting had turned up in the UK in 1962, according to the Daily Mail online, and “passed through several hands” before its donation to the London gallery in 1986.
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The committee said the gallery had a moral obligation to return the painting to the family of the man, who died in 1958.
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